The DArk Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE), is a space mission within the strategic framework of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, resulting from a collaboration of Chinese, Italian, and Swiss institutions, is a new addition to the growing number of particle detectors in space. It was successfully launched in December 2015 and has commenced nominal science operations since shortly after launch. Lending technologies from its predecessors such as AMS and Fermi-LAT, it features a powerful segmented electromagnetic full-absorption calorimeter which thanks to its 31 radiation lengths enables the study of charged cosmic rays in the energy domain of up to 100 TeV and gamma rays of up to 10 TeV. The calorimeter is complemented with a silicon-tungsten tracker converter which yields a comparable angular resolution as current space-borne pair-conversion gamma-ray detectors. In addition, the detector features a top anti-coincidence shield made of segmented silicon plastic scintillators and a boron-doped plastic scintillator on the bottom of the instrument to detect delayed neutrons arising from cosmic ray protons showering in the calorimeter.
In this talk I will introduce this exciting new addition to the growing slate of space-based particle detectors, present its current on-orbit performance and discuss recent physics results, focusing on the measurement of the cosmic-ray electron spectrum to energies of up to 5 TeV.